Hamell on Trial

Plus Special Guests

WEDNESDAY 2ND JULY 2014

Doors 7.30pm

£13.50

Over 18 only

Hamell on Trial – Rising From the Ashes…
Hamel on Trial is the moniker Ed Hamell took on when he ventured on to a solo career over 30 years ago. After a few stints in rock bands, the brash New Yorker found a battered 1937 Gibson acoustic guitar in a pawn shop and it spoke to him, he might tell you, literally. He bought that guitar and started writing songs.

“However, Hamel on Trial morphed into something no other songwriter has ever done before. With New York influences on his sleeve and a heavy dose of the Ramones, Hamell wrote songs which were unconventional, to say the least. He has been called just about everything under the book from “Bill Hicks, Hunter S. Thompson and Joe Strummer all rolled into one” by Philadelphia Weekly and a “one-man Tarantino flick: loud, vicious, luridly hilarious, gleefully and deeply offensive” by the Village Voice.

“Before I went solo, I was in a band and I was writing the songs and fronting the band, but it wasn’t anything like I am doing now,” Ed Hamell explained from his car while driving on tour somewhere in Pennsylvania. “That band was kind of like the Ramones meets the J. Geils Band. Or a better description would be a faster version of Gram Parker and the Rumor. Anyway, this was like 1984-1990 and we were an original band in Syracuse, NY and we were bold compared to what people were doing around there because it was all cover bands playing southern rock and prog rock covers. But what’s bold, anyway? Are the Ramones bold? Maybe. But fuck, we were danceable.